Effect of Slot-Pole Combination on the Electromagnetic Performance of Ironless Stator AFPM Machine With Concentrated Windings

Due to the elimination of the magnetic core on the stator, the design of coils is more flexible and more sensitive to the number of rotor poles for ironless stator axial flux permanent magnet (AFPM) machine. The slot-pole combination is a vital aspect of optimization design for the improvement of torque and power density. This article is mainly aimed at investigating the influence of slot-pole combination on the comprehensive performance of ironless stator AFPM machine with non-overlapping concentrated windings. Firstly, the space utilization of coils and winding factor of non-overlapping concentrated winding are deduced in formula form to compare the output capacity. And the copper mass and utilization are analyzed with different numbers of slots and stator diameter. Then, field utilization ratio is defined and derived to analyze magnetic flux leakage of Halbach-array PM dual-rotor for different numbers of poles. The performance comparison of the optimized prototypes is carried out using three-dimensional finite element analysis (3-D FEA). The back-EMF, torque and winding loss are also highlighted. Finally, a 50 kW prototype with 12-slot and 10-pole is designed and manufactured for experimental validations. This paper provides a valuable reference to select the basic configuration for the ironless stator AFPM machine application.